


safe with me

by IAmWhelmed



Category: Codename: Kids Next Door
Genre: F/M, Good job scarring the supreme leader for life Hoagie, Horror Game VR, Jealous Nigel Uno, Just a drabble, Nigel is Annoyed and He Doesn't Know Why, Protective Nigel Uno, Scared Rachel McKenzie, even for me, that got dark surprisingly fast, to get this idea out of my head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29904699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmWhelmed/pseuds/IAmWhelmed
Summary: It was just a stupid virtual program Numbuh 2 cooked up, some game that sounded like so much fun at first, but seemed ridiculous in retrospect. It was good for training, he supposed, with this game’s horror elements. Evading adult attack, checking surroundings by peeking around corners to be sure the face of the stupid little program and his stupid little blood-covered bat wasn’t close by.He wouldn’t have ever agreed to let Numbuh 362 step so much as one foot into the system if he’d known she was going to be like this.OR Rachel does not react well to horror games, and her tendency to cling to some faceless nobody operative is driving Nigel up a wall.
Relationships: Rachel T. McKenzie | Numbuh 362/Nigel Uno | Numbuh 1





	safe with me

She wasn’t a coward. She knew that. Numbuh 5 knew that. Numbuh 57 knew that.

Numbuh 1  _ definitely  _ knew that.

So why she was insisting on acting like such a…  _ girl _ , well, it eluded him. It was just a stupid virtual program Numbuh 2 cooked up, some game that sounded like so much fun at first, but seemed ridiculous in retrospect. It was good for training, he supposed, with this game’s horror elements. Evading adult attack, checking surroundings by peeking around corners to be sure the face of the stupid little program and his stupid little blood-covered bat wasn’t close by. (His skin tingled, and he’d yelped more than once, but it was just a program, he knew that. Numbuh 5, who was padding around silently at his side with a raised S.P.L.A.N.K.E.R knew that. Numbuh 5whatever knew that, seemed awfully comfortable for a kid with the trained, murderous eyes of Numbuh 1 on him.)

Numbuh 57 was along for the ride, heard 2 gossiping about it in the Mess Hall and demanded, as a fellow geek, that he get to do a test run. Numbuh 362 caught wind of it from her resident moonbase nerds-- bunch of hawking chickens they were. Just for fun, just to try it out.

He wouldn’t have ever agreed to let Numbuh 362 step so much as one foot into the system if he’d known she was going to be like  _ this _ .

A figure, small, deathly white like copy paper not yet used to print an essay, drifted across the hall suddenly. A ghost, programmed to guide them to the next checkpoint, no doubt. 362 sucked in a breath and gripped at 57’s wrist, dangerously close to his hand (where 1 could tell, by the way the fingers flexed, that he was dying to hold hers). He growled to himself and played with the trigger of his S.P.I.C.E.R, toying with the idea of shooting it right between 362’s trembling shoulder and 57’s more steady gait. Maybe then, she’d remember herself. Even more to his annoyance, 57 patted her hand, mumbled to her:  _ It’s just a game. Nothing here is real. _

And he was right, but the fact that he was the one who said it, that her shoulders relaxed and she let go of 57’s wrist because  _ he  _ said it…

He shook his head. The breakup with Lizzie was still fresh, and his heart hadn’t let go of her. He didn’t think it ever would. He loved her, so very much, and he’d been dumb enough to mess things up. Dumb enough to let her walk away. (A part of him said that it was for the better, that maybe Lizzie deserved more. It made his heart sink, so he buried that thought away). He wasn’t about to be bitter because somebody like 362, somebody so much like him, as smart, as charismatic, as witty, as him-- somebody as  _ amazing  _ as her-- was able to prosper in an area he did not. If she had a crush on some operative he’d never even heard of, who was a year away from decommissioning and was yet to do a single noteworthy thing for the Kids Next Door, then fine. That was her type, he guessed. She could do a million times better, though.

What about Numbuh 2? He was romantic, he paid attention to girls, so much so that it intermittently became a hindrance. He was intelligent, accomplished. He had his eyes on the moon and he didn’t think 2 was the type to settle among the stars. Why couldn’t she go after him?

Then again… the way he looked at Abbie suggested that anything blossoming on Rachel’s part was likely to be recanted before anything came of it.

Numbuh 4 then--  _ hah _ , no. As greatly as he respected Rachel, if she so much as  _ looked  _ 4’s way, 3 would pounce, and then there’d be little left of her to lead the Kids Next Door after she was done, rank be darned.

Numbuh 60, then? He was around her often enough, wasn’t he? Not a bad soldier, knew his place, always did his job. He was respectable. Good. Perhaps even good enough for her. Still, something twisted uncomfortably in his gut, the way it did when he could feel the looming waves of Father’s flame licking the edges of the walls when the monster came marching in. He found he didn’t like that, much. Not at all.

There was a knock, knock, knock on the elevator shaft down the hall, a crackling voice on the verge of manic. It made them all stop, tremble, hairs standing on edge so high he thought the last of his body hair would leave him. “ _ Childreeen~! I’m coming for you~! _ ”

The door slammed open, and Rachel instinctively squealed and clung to 57’s arm, digging her face into the fabric of his army gear, eyes squeezed so tightly it made her face red. And he wished he could say his attention was on the echoing slam of the shaft being forced open, or the blood-covered arm that reached forward and clawed at the dim light of the hotel hall. But it wasn’t. His eyes were on Rachel’s body, clinging to 57’s stone-still frame like a rope over asparagus-infested waters.

The only thing that brought him back to life was Numbuh 5 screaming at the top of her lungs: “ _ Everybody, run! _ ”

What ensued was a Scooby-Doo chase of epic proportions. The totally fictional, but still very threatening man followed them from room to room, bat raised, crazed look in his twinkling yellow eyes. From room to room to rooftop, at one point, to bathroom; he swung wildly at them, dodging splintered attacks to the face and salsa shot at powerful speeds. He came at them, cackling like the evil adult he was all the way up the hall. He nodded to 5, who pressed the elevator call button, while he aimed his gun at the ground, coating it in salsa. As expected, the mad man slipped, flailing his arms wildly through the air as he beelined for them in a very different way. 5 and 57 leaped, and he took 362’s hand and pulled her to safety,  _ to him _ . “Split up!” He shouted, like a  _ leader _ , like a  _ real  _ KND Operative, and they all listened. Even Rachel, who was trembling so hard, he could feel it in her hand and its tightening grasp around his. Around him. He felt his smirk coming on, and he didn’t try to hide it.

“This is… crazy.”

“It couldn’t be too unusual for you, could it? Being chased around by some wacko adult?”

“Usually the adults we face just wanna… I don’t know, feed us gross food, or something! This guy, hologram or not, is trying to literally kill us! Not our childhood, not our spirit,  _ us _ !”

She had a point, there. The closest a Kids Next Door operative typically came to real, genuine (and not symbolic) death… it was usually at Father’s hand, and Father only chilled you to the bones the first few dozen fights. Now, the man was old hat, and sure, he still scared the pants right off of most operatives, but not him. Not his team. And still, the holographic psychopath chasing them up and down what he knew darn well was a 2 x 4 holodeck set his body on edge, hands clenched, heart beating with trepidation like it was trying to be quiet for his sake, but he could still hear it in his ears. It was all in good fun, he knew this. He could give 2 a call and have him axe the level completely. Numbuh 362 knew that, too. But they weren’t the type to back down. What if this actually happened, after all? What if, one day, they drove somebody like Mister Boss too far? What if Grandma Stuffum’s tastes in nasty, disgusting food became more gruesome? She’d already gone as far as puppy feet, what was stopping her from deciding feeding  _ other children  _ to operatives was ideal?

The truth was, not much.

So they needed to prepare for it. And besides, Rachel didn’t get to do field work much anymore, and the last time she did, she ended up in a hospital bed, out of commission until the broccoli wore off. He was sure that, as much as he could see the shivers running down her spine, there was fire in there, somewhere. Otherwise, she’d have called it all off, by now. He lowered his weapon. “We’ve got two exits from here, so no matter which way he comes at us, we have an--”

Thunder struck outside the window. Bright. Loud. Enough to jar most kids. Maybe not him, not while he was in mission mode, but it wasn’t surprising to see Rachel jump. Or for her hair to stand up. Or for her to inhale so sharply he could hear her lungs struggle. He raised his hands to soothe her, remind her to remain quiet, or he’d likely track them down long before they came up with a plan. And still, she managed to surprise him.

She leapt into his chest, hands reaching up at his turtleneck, squeezing and twisting in the fabric. Her head burrowed itself against him, and she was so close that he was sure she could hear his heart skip a beat.

And he thought he’d found her cowardice irritating, out of character, but as she nuzzled into his chest, he found himself quite content. Sure, she’d clung to 57’s arm, grabbed at his wrist, but she’d not hesitated to take his hand, and she was the calmest he’d ever seen her there-- in  _ his  _ arms, with his hands patting awkwardly at her shoulders. It was almost like she relaxed, like she could pretend it was safe.

He wanted that to be true. He’d make it true.

“Rachel…” he began, and she didn’t seem the least phased by her given name, just melted into his hands as he settled his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “You must understand, I will never let anything happen to you.” And right there, he felt it, her heart skip a beat, too. His eyes narrowed behind his glasses, and she pulled her head out of his chest, but didn’t pull away, and  _ zero help him _ , he almost wanted to… to…

Gross. Teenager stuff. He was getting older and he didn’t like it. He gave her a smirk, an eyebrow raise, and it seemed to get the same big deer-eyes it got the last time he made that face with the whole Tag debacle (pink skin, rounded lips, a stutter in her breath as she registered his words and not the smile). “You  _ are  _ the Supreme Leader, after all. Where would any of us be without you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Awww, poor Numbuh 1 still doesn't understand feelings 😂
> 
> So, first KND fic in literal years. I think I've gotten a little better, haha! Still, this is just a drabble, and not every thought is complete, so if you think I could improve on this, don't be shy! Let me know! There may or may not be more where this came from, because I KNOW this fandom is kinda dead right now, but the more alive we make it, the more we have a chance at KND getting the Arnold treatment! 😉 So let me know if you want to see more from me, too!


End file.
